A Great Many Things

I got my classroom ready for summer last week. I stripped the walls. Moved all the books off the shelves and into the closet. Cleaned out my desk drawers. Packed away seven years' worth of stuff into about a dozen boxes of varying size. Locked the door. And walked away. But when the bell rings class into session at 7:55 A.M. on August 29th, 2016, I will be nowhere near Room 115. Adults like to ask children what they'd like to be when they grow up. I'm not sure why. I guess we think it's cute when they say things like, "I want to be the boss of the astronauts," or "a nurse like my mommy," or even "Pop-Tart designer," which, if I'm being honest, has always been and will always be my personal dream career. When Young Christy was asked what she'd like to be way back when, rest assured that the word teacher  never crossed her lips. Ever. Sure, I'd play teacher with my sister sometimes, but it was really only because I liked to bo...

In Emmett's particular case, joy came in the afternoon - at 1:34 P.M. EST, to be specific, but I'm getting a little ahead of myself here. I wrote Lucy's birth story in an effort to remember as much as I could before time blurred the small details that make memories so much richer. I'm doing the same for Emmett now. So many delicious details of the day-to-day are lost to time, and I certainly don't want anything about the most precious days of my life to be blurred away, so without further ado: After getting off to a shaky start, my pregnancy with Emmett transitioned to a calm period a few weeks into my second trimester. The changes and progress were as close to reassuring as is possible (although anyone who has lost a pregnancy will tell you, you'll never quite feel safe  in any subsequent pregnancy, no matter how smoothly things go).  I felt good; people told me I looked good; he was healthy and growing; the blessings were abundant. As the third tr...